Tagged With "Focused on Keeping Families"
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Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Questioning, and/or Gender Nonconforming and Transgender Girls and Boys in the California Juvenile Justice System: A Practice Guide [nclrights.org]
If you are a child welfare professional working with youth in California, chances are this practice guide may be a useful resource! Developed by Impact Justice and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and published in January 2017, this practice guide is designed to provide probation department practice guidelines, and policy recommendations for working with lesbian, gay, bisexual, questioning, and/or gender nonconforming and transgender girls and boys who interface with the California...
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Life After Foster Care [LATimes.com]
T heir stories begin with heartbreak. A family unable or unwilling to care for them. Parents dead, addicted to drugs, absent. About 400,000 children in the U.S. live in foster care, according to federal officials. Entry into the foster care system is meant to keep them safe, but the reality is often fraught with its own dangers and disappointments. Times photojournalist Robert Gauthier interviewed more than a dozen young men and women from the Los Angeles area who were on the verge of being...
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Live in a Poor Neighborhood? Better Be a Perfect Parent. [NYTimes.com]
Eline’s children feared going to sleep in the closet of their studio apartment, but it was the only place they would be safe from the rats. Covered in blankets from neck to toe, Eline would keep an eye on the kitchen entrance and followed the sounds of the rodents rummaging in the cupboards. I represented Eline (I can’t disclose her real name), a mother of two, in Bronx Family Court when she was charged with neglect. Her younger son had been deemed undernourished because of faltering weight.
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Making the Good Stuff Louder: Trauma Dad, Bryon Hamel
Byron Hamel, (AKA Trauma Dad ), is a filmmaker , children's rights and men's wellness advocate. He's also a father with "ACEs through the roof," who survived child torture at the hands of a man now on death row for infanticide. Before the Father & ACEs chat started last week (see full chat transcript ), we discussed if and how to give a trigger warning. Hamel's experienced horrific trauma during childhood. He didn't want to traumatize those on the chat but wanted to be honest.
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Oregon psychiatrist testifies before Senate Finance Committee on the impact of childhood adversity and toxic stress on adult health
Appearing before the powerful Senate Finance Committee in Washington, DC, recently, Dr. Maggie Bennington-Davis, psychiatrist and chief medical officer of Health Share Oregon, devoted a significant portion of her testimony to the role of adversity and toxic stress during childhood on adult health, both physical and emotional. She explained how Health Share Oregon—that state’s largest Medicaid coordinated care organization—examined the people with the costliest health bills and found them to...
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Our Most Vulnerable Population - Grandparents Raising Grandchildren
Before the pandemic, grandparents raising grandchildren were already in a precarious situation. They were struggling to meet the needs of children exposed to maltreatment and trauma while also supporting the family financially. But now, we fear, things have made a critical turn for the worse while those grandparents become unemployed, sick, or in the worst-case scenario, die due to Corona Virus.
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Parenting Matters: Supporting Parents of Children Ages 0-8 (The National Academies Press 2016)
A study published by The National Academies of Sciences in 2016 resulting in 10 Recommendations to build support for parents... "Over the past several decades, researchers have identified parenting- related knowledge, attitudes, and practices that are associated with improved developmental outcomes for children and around which parenting- related programs, policies, and messaging initiatives can be designed. However, consensus is lacking on the elements of parenting that are most important...
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Building Resilience in Foster Children: The Role of the Child's Advocate [repository.law.umich.edu]
Children who enter the foster care system often suffer from the effects of traumatic stress. The sources of their trauma may vary: they may be the victims of physical abuse, sexual abuse, or neglect-or they may be exposed to violence in their homes or communities. Similarly, many children who enter the child welfare system have experienced the loss of one or more significant adults in their lives, often through death or abandonment. Although the removal of a child from an abusive or...
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Can Trained, Paid Peer Support Help New York City Keep Foster Parents? [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
By Megan Conn, The Chronicle of Social Change, December 2, 2019 When Roxanne Williams became a foster parent four years ago, she started in the deep end of the parenting pool. New York City child welfare workers brought her a boy with limited English on a Friday afternoon and left after confirming her home was safe, leaving Williams to muddle through their first days together on her own. “It was rough – you weren’t getting the calls back [from her foster care agency] as fast as you wanted...
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Child Welfare and Human Trafficking - Connections Rooted in Trauma
Recently in Washington State, there has been a massive, multi-pronged coordinated effort to address Commercially Sexually Exploited Children (CSEC) across systems. As this effort made its reach to child welfare, I was reminded of a documentary I watched years ago about two girls who were swept into a life of sexual exploitation, kept from their families and everything familiar. One of the girls was in and out of foster care and group homes, the other had run away from her family home, both...
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Child Welfare Ideas from the Experts #1: Stable Placement Equals Stable Education [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
The Chronicle of Social Change is highlighting each of the policy recommendations made this summer by the participants of the Foster Youth Internship Program (FYI), a group of 10 former foster youths who have completed congressional internships. The program is overseen each summer by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute. Each of the FYI participants crafted a policy recommendation during their time in Washington, D.C. Today we highlight the recommendation of Shay House, 22, an...
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DCYF Director Says N.H. More Focused on Keeping Families Together [nhpr.org]
By Rick Ganley and Mary McIntyre, New Hampshire Public Radio, October 17, 2019 Reports of child abuse and neglect reached a record high in New Hampshire during the last fiscal year. That's according to data released last week by the Division for Children, Youth and Families, the state's child welfare system. NHPR's Morning Edition Host Rick Ganley spoke with the DCYF director Joe Ribsam about what this data mean for measuring the agency's progress and how DCYF plans to do better. [ Please...
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Explaining behavior: Professional seek to address students' trauma [thenotebook.org]
Professionals from multiple disciplines working with children and families came together earlier this month in Philadelphia for a three-day conference on trauma-informed practice – the Greater Philadelphia Trauma Training . … About 360 people from the Philadelphia area and across the Eastern seaboard attended, she said, and about of 100 of them work with K-12 students. The first two days of the conference emphasized the basics of trauma-informed work with children from the vantage points of...
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Handouts for parents about ACEs, toxic stress & resilience
Hey everyone, here are some handouts that our founder, Jane Stevens, discovered as she was writing a story about the trauma-in formed elementary schools in Spokane, WA . We've updated it, and provided three different versions. The text is the...
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Healing ACE's
Healing Childhood Trauma I’d like to thank each member of ACE’s Connection for all your work helping and supporting children through various activities and organizations. You are clearly a collection of people who care about the children of the world. It is in recognition of these efforts that I ask you to consider two books on healing childhood trauma. They represent a life-time partnership dedicated to raising and educating healthy children. Secondly, I’d like to ask you for a word of...
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Helping Youth Transition to Adulthood: Guidance for Foster Parents
Please see the attached document to learn more about: The transition to adulthood and self-sufficiency can be challenging for any young person. For teenagers who have been living in foster care, the transition to life outside of care can be daunting. Generally, youth who have experienced foster care do not have the same safety nets and support networks as others their age, and the transition challenges can be even greater.
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How do these pediatricians do ACEs screening? Early adopters tell all.
Last week, three pediatricians — with a combined experience of 15 years integrating ACEs science into their practices — reflected on the urgency they felt several years ago that prompted them to begin screening patients for childhood adversity and resilience when there was practically no guidance at all. Along their journey , they accumulated a list of lessons learned for other pediatricians and family clinics to use. The three pediatricians participated in the ACEs Connection webinar,...
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HOWEVER KINDLY INTENTIONED: STRUCTURAL RACISM AND VOLUNTEER CASA PROGRAMS [cunylawreview.org]
When we talk about child welfare reform, we shouldn’t shy away from issues of disproportionality and institutionalized oppression, as both are prevalent, present, and deserving of dialogue. One area of conversation I’ve noted of late is with CASA programs. CASA’s are Court Appointed Special Advocates who make recommendations to the court on behalf of the child’s best interest. More often than not, CASA volunteers are well-meaning individuals who give their time to help children. But, many...
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In Los Angeles, Drug Court’s Wrap-around Services Help Parents Quit Using Drugs, Keep Their Kids [JJIE.org]
“I didn’t know how to be a mom,” Lisa Galvan said. “I was used to being by myself. It was really hard for me to adjust and even for the kids to adjust because I never was around. So when I came back out [of rehab] they gave them back to me, and within a month I started using again.” By the time Galvan was 20, she had three children and had been using meth for seven years. She had been a drug addict for far longer than she’d been a mother, and when she tried to get sober, she found out she...
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2017 Kids Count Data Book [aecf.org]
Wednesday June 14th the Annie E. Casey Foundation released the 2017 Kids Count Data Book - State Trends in Child Well-Being. This comprehensive report is " a premier source of data on children and families." You can download the report from this post, as well as on the Kids Count website , where you can also access an interactive data map in their Data Center . This is an invaluable amount of data available to the public, relevant to anyone working with children and families - with the...
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2019 Beyond Paper Tigers Conference Series - Why Take Course One and Course Two?
Community Resilience Initiative is officially launching a new series of blog posts, building to our 2019 Beyond Paper Tigers conference on June 25th - 27th. We’ll cover a range of topics relevant to conference material, events, and inspirations. In addition to the regular conference, CRI is offering two training add-on options on Tuesday June 25, 2019 prior to the conference: Resilience-Based Trainings, Course One and Two . https://criresilient.org/beyon...re-conference-event/ “A group of...
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4 years after integrating ACEs science, Pueblo, CO clinic improves services for families; cuts ER costs, doctor stress
Four years ago, Dr. Leslie Dempsey would never have talked about ACEs — adverse childhood experiences — with her patients. Now ACEs is a common topic. “Just as I don’t feel awkward asking someone if they smoke or do intravenous drugs, I don’t really feel awkward talking about their childhood traumas in a way that it relates to their health. It’s just integrated into obtaining background and social history,” she says. Dr. Leslie Dempsey Dempsey is a physician in obstetrics who oversees a team...
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A new bill would allow opioid-addicted parents to get help without losing their children (risemagazine.org)
Thirty-two percent of children entering foster care in 2015 were placed because of parental drug abuse, and states around the country have seen the number of children in foster care rise in ways they haven't seen since crack because of the new drug problem in our country today - opioids. On June 20, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would change the way we deal with drug addiction treatment and recovery. If passed in the Senate, the law would make it easier to keep parent and...
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A View From the Sharp End of New Zealand's Suicide Problem [thespinoff.co.nz]
By Gawen Carr, The Spinoff, October 21, 2019 Last week, as I left yet another 3am crisis interview in ED as a psychiatric doctor for a suicidal teenager, I felt drained and weary. This was partly due to the time, but mostly something else: although I felt I had helped keep the young person safe in the imminent future, I was frustrated that I was unable to meaningfully address the reasons why they felt that way. I thought I’d look through the recently released Ministry of Health authored...
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ACE-Aha Moments & Parenting: Meet Aprel Phelps Downey
Aprel Phelps Downey What was your ACEs Aha moment? When did you first hear about ACEs and what impact did/does it have on you? How do ACEs impact you as a parent? How is your parenting impacted by past trauma? What’s been most helpful to you as a parent parenting with ACEs? What’s been most challenging for you as a parent parenting with ACEs? What has parenting taught you? What have you learned? How do you manage complex family relationships? What inspires/encourages and helps you? I know...
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AG Kamala D. Harris Seeks to Better Serve Foster Youth [sdvoice.info]
Attorney General Kamala D. Harris Issues New Guidelines to Encourage Secure Sharing of Information Between Schools and Child Welfare Agencies to Better Serve Foster Youth Attorney General Kamala D. Harris today announced that the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Children’s Justice (BCJ), the California Department of Education (CDE), and the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) have jointly developed statewide guidelines for school districts, county offices of...
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All hands on deck (from a distance): remote care for traumatized moms and babies
Dear colleague, Coronavirus is forcing providers and allied professionals serving mothers and babies to make unprecedented decisions. Should pregnant women needing care go through our hospital quarantine entrance? Should moms deliver without partners, family or doulas present? Be sent home early before key screenings or jaundice treatment are completed? To make matters worse, our systems aren't ready for basic remote care of mothers and infants now "socially distanced". Prenatal, post-partum...
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Balancing Adverse Childhood Experiences with Hope [alliance1.org]
This report presents evidence for HOPE (Health Outcomes of Positive Experiences) based on newly released, compelling data that reinforce the need to promote positive experiences for children and families in order to foster healthy childhood development despite the adversity common in so many families. These data: Establish a spirit of hope and optimism and make the case that positive experiences have lasting impact on human development and functioning, without ignoring well-documented...
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Brief Aims to Better Understand How Positive Factors Change Child Trauma [socialjusticesolutions.org]
According to a leading group of children’s advocates, it’s not enough to just study the impact of childhood trauma and how we can lessen its toll on children and adults later in life. Armed with new data, researchers from Center for the Study of Social Policy, Alliance for Strong Families and Communities, Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative, Prevent Child Abuse America, Casey Family Programs and the Montana Institute say that positive childhood experiences are more important...
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Permanency for Sibling Groups: The Neighbor to Family Model [cbexpress.acf.hhs.gov]
Research has shown that keeping siblings together when they enter foster care bolsters positive outcomes, including reducing the trauma they experience upon being removed from their homes. The Neighbor To Family (NTF) model was designed to...
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Rising High: Los Angeles School Aimed at Disconnected Youth Expands [ChronicleOfSocialChange.org]
When high school student Kia Reid’s brother was arrested, she withdrew emotionally, missing more than a week of school. But in her absence, Reid didn’t fall through the cracks. Her teachers texted and called to check on her. “They told me [they were] not here to pressure me, but they wanted me to keep on track with my schoolwork.,” Reid said. “They were really patient, and even came over to my house and brought me my work and went over all [of it] with me.” Reid graduated in the spring with...
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Self Soothing Strategies for Parents and Kids
Learn 4 simple tools for parents and kids to calm down together. About the presenter: Joyelle Brandt is a self care coach for moms. She specializes in working with mothers who are survivors of abuse, to help them develop a personalized self soothing toolkit for stress management. As a speaker, mothering coach, and multi-media creator, Joyelle works to dismantle the stigma that keeps childhood abuse survivors stuck in shame and self-hatred. She is the author of Princess Monsters from A to Z...
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Sharing Data to Benefit Kids: A Guide for Child Welfare and Education Systems [aecf.org]
Re-sharing this blog post from the Annie E. Casey Foundation where they shared a guide for data sharing linkages between child welfare and education - the Roadmap for Foster Care and K-12 Data Linkages . ...Successful data linkages mean agencies are able to draw on all the publicly collected information to create a more complete picture of individual students in foster care, helping inform interventions that are more effective. “Data sharing between foster care and educational agencies is...
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So you know about ACEs...Turn your AHA! into Action!
Spring is the time for rebirth and new beginnings! As we look around, we can observe nature around us awakening after a long winter sleep. A true sign of resilience. At Origins , we have been lucky enough to create a space for growth and learning for both groups and individuals who work towards creating environments of healing and resilience over the winter months. After completing the first round of The Resilience Champion Certificate of 2018, we have 23 graduates putting their action plans...
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Some 350 Florida Leaders Expected to Attend Think Tank with Dr. Vincent Felitti, Co-Principal Investigator of the ACE Study; Expert on ACEs Science
Leaders from across the Sunshine State will take part in a “Think Tank” in Naples, FL, on Monday, August 6, to help create a more trauma-informed Florida. The estimated 350 attendees will include policy makers and community teams made up of school superintendents, law enforcement officers, judges, hospital administrators, mayors, PTA presidents, child welfare experts, mental health and substance abuse treatment providers, philanthropists, university researchers, state agency heads, and...
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Supportive Housing Can Help Keep Families Together [howhousingmatters.org]
By Mary K. Cunningham, Mike Pergamit, and Sarah Gillespie, How Housing Matters, June 5, 2019. Many families who come to child welfare agencies after a report of child abuse or neglect are experiencing homelessness or severe housing instability. Nearly 11 million households (PDF) nationwide are paying too much for rent, and about 1.4 million people use homeless shelters and transitional housing over the course of a year. There is no place in the country where there is enough affordable...
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The Absence of Punishment in Our Schools
Where to begin... My heart is full of hope and joy as I watch the trauma-informed schools movement swell across our nation and planet. The science of ACEs is mind-bending to say the least and we are now able to open up a much deeper dialogue about human behavior and health. Ultimately this work is about healing… All. Of. Us. A new consciousness is taking root around ending the “us vs them” construct. The idea is growing that we’re all on this journey together and that no matter where our...
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The Healing Place Podcast - Joyelle Brandt: Parenting with PTSD
I am grateful to have had the chance to sit down with Joyelle Brandt to discuss her mission of helping those who are parenting with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Thank you, Joyelle, for sharing your personal story and the beautiful work you are doing helping others along their parenting and healing journey. What a gift for those families and the children who will benefit from the steps their parents are taking to heal.
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The implicit bias of, “Mental Illness” and “mentally ill”, a lexicon of hurt.
How can we heal from the implicit bias of “ Mental Illness ” and “ mentally ill ”? I hear these words and it sounds like fingernails scraping down the chalkboard. “ The stain of dehumanization colors the mind, body and spirit and it is not so easily washed away.” - Michael Skinner Recently I read a blog post at the ACEsConnection website, “Erasing My ACES” by Sirena Wheeler. It was posted on April, 19, 2020. It struck a chord with me, many in fact and it put me on a spiral down memory lane.
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This Is How You End the Foster Care to Prison Pipeline [nationswell.com]
Almost half of all foster care youth end up in jail within two years of aging out of the system. First Place for Youth has figured out a housing and support strategy to keep these young adults out from behind bars and living on their own. Moments of stability were rare during Pamela Bolnick's childhood. She repeatedly witnessed her father beat her mother, a Venezuelan immigrant diagnosed with schizophrenia. Bolnick's mom eventually left her abusive spouse, fleeing to the Bay Area with her...
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Toxic Stress: Issue Brief on Family Separation and Child Detention [immigrationinitiative.harvard.edu]
By Jack P. Shonkoff, Immigration Initiative at Harvard, October 2019 Background The separation of children from their parents and their prolonged detention for an indefinite period of time raise profound concerns that transcend partisan politics and demand immediate resolution. Forcibly separating children from their parents is like setting a house on fire. Preventing rapid reunification is like blocking the first responders from doing their job. And subjecting children to prolonged...
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Unfinished business: Bipartisan help for child vicitims of the opiod crisis [thehill.com]
I found this post to be a helpful focus on important federal health legislation as we face a potential transition in priorities to address trauma-informed approaches to the opioid crisis. The author encourages bipartisan support to keep up momentum gained by successful programs and grants already serving communities and researching further solutions. Opioid addiction is undeniably a public health concern we know impacts multiple systems. Why not focus on increasing cross-systems support to...
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What You and Your Family Need to Know About Maternal Depression [nytimes.com]
For the first time, a national health panel has recommended a way to prevent depression during and after pregnanc y. This condition, known as perinatal depression, affects up to one in seven women and is considered the most common complication of pregnancy. The panel, the United States Preventive Services Task Force, said two types of counseling can help keep symptoms at bay. Its recommendation means that under the Affordable Care Act, such counseling must be covered by insurance with no...
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Why Do Child Welfare Agencies Keep Demanding Poor People Raise Their Kids ‘Independently’ When No One Else Does? [youthtoday.org]
I’ve just caught up with an excellent 2014 story from ProPublica on how child welfare systems deal with parents who have mental illnesses. The story looked at two cases in which parents really did have some sort of mental illness (putting them in the same company as an estimated 43.8 million Americans in any given year). That sets the point of the story apart from another major problem in child welfare — quick-and-dirty “psych evals” that mislabel parents mentally ill largely because they...
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Why Do LA’s Foster Care Facilities Keep Calling The Cops On Traumatized Kids? (witnessla.com)
On March 21, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors passed an important motion that instructed the Director of the Office of Child Protection, Michael Nash, former presiding judge of Los Angeles County’s Juvenile Court, to find out why so many of LA County’s foster children were crossing into the county’s delinquency system, what could be done to prevent that crossing, and how these so-called crossover kids could be helped if and when and if they found themselves in the clutches of both...
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Why it makes more sense to care for kids and parents at the same time [centerforhealthjournalism.org]
It’s the flu season, and David, a 4-month-old baby with a chronic lung disease, is with his pediatrician for a flu shot. David’s condition leaves him particularly vulnerable to respiratory illnesses like the flu. During the visit, David’s parents, Clare and Dave, discover that they need to make separate appointments to receive their own flu shots, which only complicates their already overwhelmed daily routine. Now imagine a place where David and his parents can receive a flu shot at the same...
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Why we should do everything possible to avoid foster care and keep kids with their families [DallasNews.com]
When I read about the crisis in Texas foster care system, all I can think about is my beautiful younger sister Nannette. Nannette got out of foster care, but she didn't survive. She became a statistic, a victim of the consequences of what experts call adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs. Research has shown that ACEs accumulate over time, and the number of these experiences in childhood predicts morbidity and mortality in adulthood. It doesn't say it on her death certificate, but Nannette...
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Why You Should Write a Letter to Yourself Tonight (Bessel van der Kolk, MD)
Why You Should Write A Letter To Yourself Tonight Writing is one of the most effective ways to access an inner world of feelings that is the key to recovering from ...
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Will the new foster care law give grandparents a hand? (ncsl.org)
On Feb. 9, President Donald Trump signed the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 (H.R. 1892) to keep the government funded for six more weeks and pave the way for a long-term budget deal that will extend to the end of the fiscal year. Included in the act is the Family First Prevention Services Act, which has the potential to dramatically change child welfare systems across the country. One of the major areas this legislation seeks to change is the way Title IV-E funds can be spent by states. Title...
Ask the Community
Looking for Writers: New magazine addressing foster care system and family trauma
Hello, Everyone, I am co-editor of a new publication on Medium.com, to be launched in March 2020. Collective Power is the written arm of Home for Good , a collective organization recently launched after 6 years of planning. HFG began when our founders asked themselves, "What would a system that reflects our love for our children look like?" HFG's mission is to transform the trauma too often perpetuated by the various helping systems, among the people they purport to help—whether the...